Liberals say Harper Tories once again playing politics with crime bills

The Conservative government is once again putting politics ahead of public policy when it comes to criminal justice, Opposition critics charged Sunday.

As the House of Commons begins its final week before a six-week Christmas break, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews are loudly complaining of Liberal stalling on justice bills.

It’s a familiar drumbeat of the Harper government that comes at the end of every parliamentary session, spring and fall.

“And it’s completely untrue,” Liberal justice critic Marlene Jennings explains for the umpteenth time since Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s tough-on-crime Tories came to power in 2006.

“If anyone is holding up the government’s agenda on criminal justice it is the government itself …. It’s simply scurrilous what Mr. Nicholson is doing.”

Nicholson, in an interview Sunday with The Canadian Press, obviously doesn’t see it that way.

“We’re doing our best to move them,” he said of the 17 crime bills currently on the order paper. “Let’s get the ones that are possible to get.”

He rattles off a list of justice bills he says have been delayed in one way or another by the opposition, either båy calling witnesses critical of the legislation, proposing amendments, or other means.

But for every bill Nicholson cites, there’s another that languishes for weeks or months because the government doesn’t push it forward after its high-profile introduction.

The Conservatives like to keep lots of justice bills in the shop window, pushing hard on the most hot-button and problematic legislation while leaving on the vine the low-hanging fruit that all parties would quickly pass.

“Police and probation officers need to regain the ability to collect breath and other samples from offenders who are under court order to abstain from consuming drugs and alcohol,” Nicholson said in October 2009 when he tabled a bill that responded to a Supreme Court ruling.

The legislation died when Harper prorogued Parliament last December. It wasn’t reintroduced until May 31 and has been left for dead by the government ever since.

Contrast that with pardons reform. The Conservatives actually studied pardons legislation closely in 2006 and made some minor changes, but when The Canadian Press revealed the pardon of former hockey coach and convicted sex offender Graham James last spring the issue suddenly took on new political urgency.

A partial reform was rushed through the House of Commons with unanimous consent in June, while more substantive changes were put over to this fall.

The public safety committee, chaired by a Conservative, has held only three full hearings on the pardons bill this autumn and Toews’ office announced Sunday there will be a special committee vote this Tuesday forcing “the Ignatieff-led coalition” to vote on the legislation.

“I think most people would agree that child sex offenders should never receive a pardon in this country, and that’s all we’re saying,” Nicholson said Sunday.

But the proposed pardons bill says much more than that.

It would deny a criminal record suspension to anyone convicted of more than three indictable crimes — of any kind — for life.

Conservative MPs on the committee studying the pardons bill have praised reformed criminals appearing to testify, assuring them the legislation isn’t meant to target people like them.

When it is pointed out that’s exactly what the legislation as written will do, the Conservatives accuse the critics of siding with pedophiles over victims.

“Why do they do it? It seems to work,” said Liberal Senator James Cowan. “It appeals to the gut.”